FCT editor defends decision by misrepresenting the study?

Did Dr Hayes
misunderstand or misrepresent Séralini’s study in claiming the authors made a "definitive" link to cancer? No such claim is in the paper and the word “cancer” does not appear in the paper.

On 10 December 2013 Dr Hayes defended his
decision to retract the Séralini study
in a published statement[1] which
appeared to contradict his previous statement[2] in
which he wrote that the results reported in the Séralini study were “not
incorrect”. In his more recent justification, Dr Hayes wrote that
the retraction was in line with COPE guidelines, since the study
was an example of unreliable findings due to “error”. Specifically, he wrote:

“The data are inconclusive,
therefore the claim (i.e., conclusion) that Roundup Ready maize NK603 and/or
the Roundup herbicide have a link to cancer is unreliable… it is the entire
paper, with the claim that there is a definitive link between GMO and cancer
that is being retracted.”

This statement is problematic from two points of view.

First, Dr Hayes wrongly attempts to equate inconclusiveness with error.
The two concepts are not synonymous. And while error may in some cases be
grounds for retraction, inconclusiveness is not.

Second, Dr Hayes misunderstands or misrepresents Séralini’s study. The
authors never inferred or claimed that the GM maize NK603 and/or the Roundup
herbicide had a “definitive link” to “cancer”. In fact, they do not even use
the word “cancer” in the paper, though some of the analyzed tumours are
identified as being of cancerous types and a few are identified as metastatic.

Instead, Séralini’s team simply observed and recorded the rate and
timing of tumours (which are not, by definition, synonymous with “cancer”) in
the various groups of animals. This is in line with the internationally
accepted norm of the OECD chronic toxicity guideline 452, which requires that
in a chronic toxicity study, all “lesions” (which would include tumours) are recorded.[3]
According to this OECD standard, it would be scientifically reprehensible, even
fraudulent, to ignore the tumours.

An objective reading of the paper would show the care taken by the
authors to avoid definitive claims. Instead they recommend that further studies
should be carried out. The only person claiming definitiveness in the Séralini
paper is Dr Hayes.

Dr Hayes does not, however, specify any unjustified or “definitive”
claims in the published study. Under the guidelines of the Committee on
Publication Ethics (COPE) to which FCT subscribes, the editor could request the
authors to publish a correction or clarification of any specific unjustified
claims.[4] Even if
such claims had somehow escaped the attention of the peer reviewers and were
identified, however, this would not be grounds for retraction.